Doing our own EMS

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Permalink Reply by Michael D. Smith on May 1, 2008 at 3:14pm

Joe, Good luck this is a tough sell sometimes to the local government and often to the fire fighters who may not be too willing to ride the squad. Try checking with your state's ems department or state ems director, there might be some grant money to expand services. Do you all transport BLS patients currently? If you do you are half way there. Once you get medics up and running is there a neighboring department with much busier stations? If so perhaps you can work a deal to have your medics ride there to gain some experience. You may not want to turn loose brand new medics in your new ALS transport program. Good luck you can contact me via email if you have more specific questions.
Mike

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Permalink Reply by Paul Lomske on May 1, 2008 at 4:52pm

What type of FD are currently?
Vollie, combi, full-time?

What type of area do you serve?

Is your dept. covering the runs you have now, or is there room for improvement?

Are you, or any other FF's EMT-B's or Medics?

Will you require all Fire members become EMT's?

If your a vollie station, it's going to increase your workload greatly.
Some members may not be able to, or want to, make the transition to both. Respect that and don't push it.

Our dept does fire and squad.
I'm currently going through an EMT-B course.
Difficult time. Juggling studying, family, work and not the greatest instruction.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Hedges on May 1, 2008 at 5:14pm

Joe, I looked at your profile and see that you are on two departments. I'd assume you have a more active role on the department that you are full-time with. It seems that your department already responds with a crew with the intent of assisting the private ambulance crews. You listed "EMT-Ds" as the crew, I'm an Illinois paramedic and I am unfamiliar with that classification. Maybe you meant EMT-Basics? Either way, you've made the effort to "respond to all EMS calls in a State approved ambulance", have you considered transporting and billing your BLS patients? Obviously your department needs to consider the fact that you need to capible of responding all day, every day with that ambulance. I used to live and work in Rockford, IL for a private ambulance company and there were several departments that recently decided to provide transport EMS. One went BLS and the other ALS( right off the bat.). I'll see if I can get any of them to take a look at this discussion and provide some feedback. Good luck.

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Permalink Reply by Joe McClelland on May 1, 2008 at 5:29pm

We are all EMT Defib certified. We want to transport all BLS first, then switch to ALS sometime down the road. As of now, we respond to assist the private amb. only. We do have an ambulance that can transport, it is just proving the plan to the Village fathers.

Any help will be great.
Thanks Matt

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Permalink Reply by Joe McClelland on May 1, 2008 at 5:31pm

We are a Full-time department that is in an Urban setting. We cover all EMS runs as of now. All members are EMT-D(defib) certified.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Hedges on May 1, 2008 at 6:11pm

Another route to consider is explaining to the village how the additional EMS personnel will be used. Where I work, we have thee members on our staffed ambulances and we jump to a tender or brush truck as needed with a medic staying back to run with call-back personnel. At a fire or fire alarm, we are used for fireground tasks like inital ventillation, search and rescue or initial back-up crew. Our ambulance crew is hardly 'dedicated' to the box alone, we fufill many important roles in a variety of responses.

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